Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Association Between Racial Residential Segregation And Covid-19 Mortality, Suresh Nath Neupane, Erin Ruel

CSLF Articles

This study investigates the impact of racial residential segregation on COVID-19 mortality during the first year of the US epidemic. Data comes from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's and the University of Wisconsin's joint county health rankings project. The observation includes a record of 8,670,781 individuals in 1488 counties. We regressed COVID-19 deaths, using hierarchical logistic regression models, on individual and county-level predictors. We found that as racial residential segregation increased, mortality rates increased. Controlling for segregation, Blacks and Asians had a greater risk of mortality, while Hispanics and other racial …

What Does Network Analysis Teach Us About International Environmental Cooperation?, Stefano Carattini, Sam Fankhauser, Jianjian Gao, Caterina Gennaioli, Pietro Panzarasa

ECON Publications

This paper uses network analysis to study the structural properties of international environmental cooperation. We investigate four pertinent hypotheses. First, we quantify how the growing popularity of environmental treaties since the early 1970s has led to the emergence of an environmental collaboration network and document how collaboration is accelerating. Second, we show how over time the network has become denser and more cohesive, and distances between countries have become shorter, facilitating more effective policy coordination and knowledge diffusion. Third, we find that the network, while global, has a noticeable European imprint: initially, the United Kingdom and more recently France and …

Implementing Federalism: The Case Of Nepal, Roy W. Bahl, Andrey Timofeev, Serdar Yilmaz

ECON Publications

The new Constitution of Nepal established a federal system of governance in 2015. Implementation began in 2018 following the 2017 subnational elections. The new system is comprised of seven provinces and 753 local governments. The Constitution assigns important functional responsibilities to provincial and local governments and mandates that they have significant autonomy in deciding how services will be delivered. Subnational governments accounted for over one-third of total government expenditures planned for FY2021, financed primarily by intergovernmental transfers. This paper describes the new federal system, discusses the early implementation successes and challenges, and draws some lessons from Nepal's experience.

The Effect Of E-Cigarette Indoor Vaping Restrictions On Infant Mortality, Michael Cooper, Michael F. Pesko

ECON Publications

We estimate the effect of county-level e-cigarette indoor vaping restrictions (IVRs) on infant mortality using United States birth certificates from 2010 to 2015. We estimate difference-indifferences models and find that e-cigarette indoor vaping restrictions increased infant mortality by 0.39 infants per 1,000 live births (12.9%). These effects were disproportionately higher for infants born to younger mothers and in locations with higher baseline levels of prenatal smoking. Infant mortality increased by 34.1% between 100 days to 1 year after IVRs. Infant mortality due to infections and neoplasms were particularly elevated.

How Data Security Concerns Can Hinder Natural Experiment Research: Background And Potential Solutions, Michael F. Pesko

ECON Publications

Health economists conducting cancer-related research often use geocoded data to analyze natural experiments generated by policy changes. These natural experiments can provide causal interpretation under certain conditions. Despite public health benefit of this rigorous natural experiment methodology, data providers are often reluctant to provide geocoded data due to confidentiality concerns. In this paper, I provide an example of the value of natural experiments from e-cigarette research and show how this research was hindered by security concerns. While the tension between data access and security will not be resolved overnight, I offer two recommendations: 1) provide public access to aggregated data …

Feeling The Heat? Fear Of Failure And Performance, Alberto Chong, Marco Chong

CSLF Working Papers

Using a new, objective measure, we study the role of fear of failure in performance and find that it is positively linked with the latter, a finding that tends to contradict the conventional wisdom in both psychology and behavioral economics. We use individual data from the nationally syndicated television show MasterChef for the years 2010 to 2020 and exploit situations in which contestants are on the verge of being dropped from competition. Using ordinary least squares, we show that extreme fear of failure is associated with an increase of two to four positions in the final placement of the competition.

Applying The Loss-Conflict Model Of Fiscal Retrenchment: Understanding City Expenditure And Revenue Responses To A Budget Crisis, Benedict Jimenez

PMAP Publications

Using data from a 2015 national survey of U.S. cities with a population of 50,000 or more, this research examines cities’ responses to a budget crisis. The study develops and tests a model of retrenchment choices that categorizes expenditure- and revenue-related actions implemented by cities based on the degree of loss that they are likely to inflict on budgetary actors and the resulting conflict. Factor analysis confirms that city responses can be categorized into two groups representing slight-loss/low-conflict and high-loss/high-conflict retrenchment actions. The study then applies regression analysis to identify the different economic, fiscal, demographic, political, governance, and institutional factors …

The Network Of Online Stolen Data Markets: How Vendor Flows Connect Digital Marketplaces, Marie Ouellet, David Maimon, C. Jordan Howell, Yubao Wu

CSLF Articles

In the face of market uncertainty, illicit actors on the darkweb mitigate risk by displacing their operations across digital marketplaces. In this study, we reconstruct market networks created by vendor displacement to examine how digital marketplaces are connected on the darkweb and identify the properties that drive vendor flows before and after a law enforcement disruption. Findings show that vendors’ movement across digital marketplaces creates a highly connected ecosystem; nearly all markets are directly or indirectly connected. These network characteristics remain stable following a law enforcement operation; prior vendor flows predict vendor movement before and after the interdiction. The findings …

Cryptomarkets And The Returns To Criminal Experience, Marie Ouellet, David Décary-Hétu, Andréanne Bergeron

CSLF Articles

Criminal capital theory suggests more experienced offenders receive higher returns from crime. Offenders who accrue skills over their criminal career are better able to minimize detection, increase profits, and navigate illegal markets. Yet shifts in the offending landscape to technologically-dependent crimes have led some to suggest that the skills necessary to be successful in conventional crimes no longer apply, meaning ‘traditional’ criminals may be left behind. The recent turn of drug vendors to online markets provides an opportunity to investigate whether ‘street smarts’ translate to success in technologically-dependent crimes. This study surveys 51 drug vendors on online drug markets to …

Lessons Learned And Prospects For Reform, Roy W. Bahl, William J. Mccluskey, Riël Franzsen

ECON Publications

Property Tax in Asia: Policy and Practice. Chapter 3 - Lessons Learned and Prospects for Reform

Context And Comparative Analysis, Roy W. Bahl, William J. Mccluskey, Riël Franzsen, Wenjing Li

ECON Publications

Property taxation is not new to Asia. China has some of the oldest examples of property and land taxes, the Philippine version has been emerging since 1901, and the property tax laws in Hong Kong (a special administrative region, or SAR, of China) were in place in 1845. Some Asian jurisdictions have modernized their property taxes to keep in step with their economic growth, but others have allowed their property taxes to fall into disrepair. This analysis aims to show how to make good practices better and how to put weak practices on a path to improvement.

This chapter provides …

Current Policies And Practices, Roy W. Bahl, William J. Mccluskey, Riël Franzsen

ECON Publications

Asian jurisdictions tax real property in many different ways: some tax ownership and some land use; some tax land and some land and buildings; and some have no property tax. These broad differences in what they tax lead to important differences in how they tax real property: how they value property, what they do not tax, and how they go about their collections.

This chapter compares practices in all 13 jurisdictions with good practices in property taxation to suggest the best way forward. It begins with a review and analysis of how these jurisdictions have structured their property tax bases …

Successful Tax Reforms In The Recent International Experience: Lessons In Political Economy And The Nuts And Bolts Of Increasing Country Tax Revenue Effort, Jorge Martinez-Vazquez

ICEPP Working Papers

The main objective of this paper is to extract practical lessons on increasing tax revenue effort that are relevant to developing countries. Specifically, it focuses on insights from two dimensions: the political economy requirements to generate public support for reform and the technical factors (“nuts and bolts”) of substantially increasing tax revenue effort. General topics covered include the political economy preconditions that facilitate tax reform, how and by whom tax reform should be implemented, the timing of reform efforts, determinants of current tax effort, tax policy choice options, tax administration options, and the enhancement of tax morale and compliance norms. …

Evidence On Economies Of Scale In Local Public Service Provision: A Meta-Analysis, Juan Luis Gómez-Reino, Santiago Lago-Peñas, Jorge Martinez-Vazquez

ICEPP Working Papers

The standard theory of optimal jurisdictional size hinges on the existence of economies of scale in the provision of local public goods and services. However, despite its relevance for forced local amalgamation programs and related policies, the empirical evidence on the existence of such economies of scale remains elusive. The main goal of this paper is to produce an updated and comprehensive quantitative review of the existence of economies of scale in the provision of local public goods using a meta-analysis approach to systematize the wide range of empirical approaches and modeling frameworks found in the previous literature. Our analysis …

Testing The Effects Of Adaptive Learning Courseware On Student Performance: An Experimental Approach, Grace Eau, Derek Hoodin, Tareena Musaddiq

ECON Publications

An increasing number of college and university courses are being offered in an online format. Even for courses offered face-to-face, instructors are increasingly turning toward use of online platforms to help with student learning, especially for courses with high enrollment. This study tests the efficacy of adaptive learning platforms in a sample of undergraduate students in a large urban university, using an experimental design that compares the learning outcomes of students in classrooms that used an adaptive learning tool to those who did not. The results indicate that better performing students, particularly female students, benefit the most from using adaptive …

Fiscal Policies, Decentralization, And Life Satisfaction, Manuela Ortega Gil

ICEPP Working Papers

This paper studies the relationship between wellbeing and governments’ fiscal policies across the world, including government decentralization, over the period between 1999 and 2018. In contrast to the previous literature on wellbeing, the current paper investigates four forms of life satisfaction (SL) as the dependent variable and tries to answer whether different types of public spending program, different types of taxes and the level of fiscal decentralization influence wellbeing as measured by life satisfaction. The analysis uses survey data from two sources of life satisfaction variables: The World Values Survey and the European Values Survey, both of which use a …

Do You Know To Whom You Pay Your Taxes?: The Case Of Decentralized Spain, Julio López-Laborda, Fernando Rodrigo, Eduardo Sanz-Arcega

ICEPP Working Papers

A necessary condition for the efficiency gains that the theory of fiscal federalism attributes to decentralization to be effective is that citizens rightly assign the governmental responsibility for public action. However, surveys show that most Spaniards are unable to correctly identify the taxes received by the various levels of government. Exploiting the 2015 wave of the Spanish Institute for Fiscal Studies’ Fiscal Barometer, this paper empirically determines the profile of citizens who are best able to identify the allocation of taxes among levels of government in Spain. The estimates suggest that these citizens are those who are able to identify …

The Fiscal Architecture Of Subnational Governments In Federal Nepal, Khim Lal Devkota

ICEPP Working Papers

The formation of the three tiers of government represents a novel experiment in Nepal’s federal journey since the adoption of the new constitution in 2015. State power in the former unitary system, both rights and responsibilities, has been divided across federal, provincial and local tiers of government, with a mix of exclusive and concurrent powers for each. In matters within their jurisdiction, subnational governments can formulate laws on financial rights, set their own budgets, make decisions, devise plans and policies, implement those plans, levy taxes, and collect revenues. In the roughly three years since devolution went into effect, a few …

The Effect Of Crises On Fiscal And Political Recentralization: Large-Panel Evidence, Gustavo Canavire-Bacarreza, Pablo Evia Salas, Jorge Martinez-Vazquez

ICEPP Working Papers

Economic stability plays a key role in any fiscal and political decentralization process. In the face of financial and economic shocks, when revenues and expenditures are reduced, countries may decide to gather resources at the central level—creating a recentralization scenario—or may take away devolved powers and centralize political institutions. Using data for 75 countries, we examine the effects of economic crisis on fiscal and political decentralization. We find that several types of crises lead to fiscal recentralization; only in the case of domestic borrowing crises is the effect further revenue decentralization, probably reflecting the central government’s willingness to empower subnational …

Designing Effective And Acceptable Road Pricing Schemes: Evidence From The Geneva Congestion Charge, Andrea Baranzini, Stefano Carattini, Linda Tesauro

ECON Publications

While instruments to price congestion exist since the 1970s, less than a dozen cities around the world have a cordon or zone pricing scheme. Geneva, Switzerland, may be soon joining them. This paper builds on a detailed review of the existing schemes to identify a set of plausible design options for the Geneva congestion charge. In turn, it analyzes their acceptability, leveraging a large survey of residents of both Geneva and the surrounding areas of Switzerland and France. Our original approach combines a discrete choice experiment with randomized informational treatments. We consider an extensive set of attributes, such as perimeter, …

Managing Momentum In Climate Negotiations, Stefano Carattini, Andreas Loeschel

ECON Publications

No abstract provided.

Welfare Benefits In Highly Decentralized Fiscalsystems: Evidence On Interregional Mimicking, Luis Ayala, Ana Herrero, Jorge Martinez-Vazquez

ICEPP Working Papers

This paper analyzes the determinants of welfare benefit levels within a highly fiscally decentralized context. More specifically, we analyze the role of mimicking as a driver of the institutional design of subnational government policies in the absence of federal co-ordination and financing. Empirically, we focus on the welfare benefit programs of Spanish regional governments during the period 1996-2015. Our results strongly support the significant role played by mimicking: regional public agents observe what their peers are doing and act accordingly, and this holds even in a context of low mobility of households.

Electoral Accountability And Fiscal Federalism:The Case Of Peru, Janet Porras Mendoza, Charles R. Hankla, Jorge Martinez-Vazquez

ICEPP Working Papers

Accountability is at the heart of the democratic enterprise. One commonly touted benefit of decentralization is that it promotes this accountability by allowing sub-national governments to target fiscal policy more precisely to the varying preferences of people in different locales. But if accountability is really functioning as it should, then citizens should use the ballot box to reward and punish local officials for their concrete policy behavior. In other words, we should not only be able to link the presence of decentralization with improvements in local public goods, but we should also be able to connect voting behavior in specific …

Strengthening Property Taxation Within Developing Asia, Roy W. Bahl, William J. Mccluskey, Riël Franzsen

ECON Publications

No abstract provided.

Trust In Government Institutions And Tax Morale, Antonios M. Koumpias, Gabriel Leonardo, Jorge Martinez-Vazquez

ICEPP Working Papers

What actions do governments around the world take that may affect individuals’ trust in the government that positively influence tax morale (or a positive attitude toward tax compliance)? This paper researches which are the most salient government institutions that breed individual trust and the extent to which this trust ends up increasing citizens’ tax morale. We use cross-country survey information from the World Values Survey and the Freedom House spanning 92 countries and six survey waves during the period 1981-2014. Conditional on the level of political rights and civil liberties, we confirm prior evidence that trust in government organizations positively …

Property Tax Assessment Quality: Willingness-To-Pay For Reduced Risk In A Lab Experiment*, Jason J. Delaney, David Sjoquist, Sally Wallace

CSLF Articles

We conduct a laboratory experiment to explore the willingness to pay to improve the accuracy of property assessment and issues regarding attitudes toward these assessments and taxes. We explore individual willingness to pay to improve property assessment accuracy; the extent to which the willingness to pay to improve the accuracy of property assessments depends on whether the risk for other property owners decreases; and fnally, we use the results to estimate demand for reduced risk and fnd that subjects were not willing to pay to reduce the assessment variance to a level consistent with best practices in property tax assessment.

Taxing Sugary Drinks, Roy W. Bahl, Richard M. Bird

ECON Publications

Countries everywhere are considering the increasing evidence on the possible health benefits from reducing the consumption of sugary drinks – often called sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB). This paper examines the rationale for taxing sugary drinks as a way to reduce sugar consumption and considers the experience to date. That excess consumption of sugar has serious adverse health consequences and that taxing sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) may reduce the consumption of sugar are both largely supported by the evidence. What is less clear is whether SSB taxes can adequately address the problems arising from the excess consumption of sugar. If so, the question …

The Architecture Of Intergovernmental Transfers: Principles And Practice In Low- And Middle-Income Countries, Roy W. Bahl

ECON Publications

Countries structure their intergovernmental transfers in many different ways, depending on the objectives they wish to achieve and on how they decide to use expenditure and revenue assignments in their intergovernmental fiscal systems. The basic building blocks of the architecture of intergovernmental transfers are vertical sharing, which addresses the vertical fiscal imbalance in the system, and horizontal distribution, which addresses the reduction in fiscal disparities. The industrial countries reviewed in this volume do a good job with applying best international practices to produce reasonably efficient and equitable systems, but low- and middle-income countries are more burdened by resource constraints and …

Cooperation In The Climate Commons, Stefano Carattini, Simon Levin, Alessandro Tavoni

ECON Publications

Climate change is a global externality that has proven difficult to address through formal institutions alone due to the public good properties of climate change mitigation and the lack of a supranational institution for enforcing global treaties. Given these circumstances, which are arguably the most challenging for international cooperation, commitment problems and free-riding incentives for countries to delay costly mitigation efforts are major obstacles to effective environmental agreements. Starting from this premise, we examine domestic mitigation efforts, with the goal of assessing the extent to which the willingness of individuals to contribute voluntarily to the public good of climate mitigation …

Rebalancing The Economy And Reforming The Fiscal System Of The People’S Republic Of China, Roy W. Bahl

ECON Publications

No abstract provided.